Office of the Provost

Dr. Hajela received his undergraduate degree (with distinction) in 1977 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He received master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University (1979) and in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (1981). He was awarded his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 1982 and did postdoctoral training at UCLA before joining the University of Florida as a faculty member in 1983, where he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1987. He was recruited to Rensselaer in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1990 and was promoted to full professor in 1992. He served as President and Chair of the Faculty Senate (1999-2002). He was appointed Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education in 2005. He has been active in several national and international organizations. He is a past Vice President of the International Society of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization. He was also a past Chair of ASME's Aerospace Division, an organization that serves over 10,000 ASME members with interest in Aerospace Engineering. In 2003, he served as a Congressional Fellow responsible for Science and Technology Policy in the Office of U.S. Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT). He worked on several legislative issues related to aerospace and telecommunications policy, including the crafting of the anti-SPAM legislation (CAN-SPAM) that was signed into law in December 2003. Dr. Hajela has served on different National Academies panels related to Aerospace and Aviation research, including the first Decadal Survey of Aeronautics.

Dr. Hajela maintains a collaborative role in research, working with graduate students and research colleagues in areas related to complex system analysis and design in the presence of uncertainties. He has conducted research at NASA's Langley and Glenn Research Centers, and the Eglin Air Force Armament Laboratory. He also worked at the Boeing Company as the Boeing-A.D. Welliver Fellow in 1995. He has published over 270 papers and articles in the areas of structural and multidisciplinary optimization, and is an author/editor of four books in these areas. He has held editorial assignments and serves on the editorial boards of several international journals. In 2004, he was the recipient of AIAA's Biennial Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Award. Dr. Hajela is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a Fellow of the Aeronautical Society of India (AeSI), and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).